Phew

Finally, after three galettes, a dough that holds together! I think I can safely say it was dodgy flour -- Lidl's finest organic flour behaved impeccably. In the fridge now, ready for baking tomorrow.

The weather forecast was wrong again today. Instead of pouring with rain, it was windy and mostly sunny. So I went to the market in Lézignan in the morning, mainly to buy some cherries for making compote with. May be my last chance for cherries at a reasonable price (6 euros a kilo) -- they have been late, scarce, and expensive this year.

In other news, yesterday S and I both received a letter from the DWP in the UK saying they'd stopped our pensions because they hadn't received the proof of life certificates we sent six weeks ago. This didn't entirely surprise us because post between Europe and the UK is so unreliable now. They sent duplicate forms, so S went to the Mairie and got Serge to witness the fact that we are indeed still alive.  We decided we'd post the forms next week when we're in the UK -- safer.

But today, someone in a Brits in the Languedoc Facebook group I'm in said she'd got the same letter. And then seven other people in this relatively small group came along and said the same. Apparently in the continuing collapse of British public services there is a massive backlog in processing these forms. They said they'd sorted it by ringing the DWP. So I did that, but during the 20 minutes I was on hold I checked my bank account and discovered they'd paid my pension in yesterday -- 10 days later than usual and two weeks after the date of the letter. So I hung up. No sign of S's pension though :(

I will say no more about the collapsing UK except for commiserations for those of you suffering the lying, law-breaking chancers in charge. And very much in my thoughts are the families of the school shooting victims in Texas. Other problems are trivial in that context.